Coinbase survey finds over half of customers don’t understand crypto tax

The 2026 Crypto Tax Readiness Report, done with Cointracker, found that only 49% correctly understand that crypto is taxable anytime it is sold.

What to know:

• Almost a quarter of users mistakenly believe simple transfers trigger tax events.
• Users averaged 2.5 platforms/wallets with 83% using self-custodial wallets.
• Only 35% reported that they’d adjusted their cost basis in the past.

More than half of cryptocurrency investors don’t understand the fundamental concept of taxability when it comes to their digital asset holdings, according to a survey by the U.S.-listed crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) and Cointracker, a crypto tax and portfolio tracking platform.

The 2026 Crypto Tax Readiness Report found that only 49% correctly understand that crypto is taxable anytime it is sold, while almost a quarter mistakenly believe simple transfers trigger tax events.

Despite the majority of users having good intentions when it comes to crypto tax compliance, the multi-platform reality of crypto ownership exacerbates the so-called cost basis problem, deducting the original purchase price of an asset to report capital gains.

The survey found users averaged 2.5 platforms/wallets with 83% using self-custodial wallets, and only 35% reporting that they’d adjusted their cost basis in the past. The survey, conducted in late 2025, surveyed 3,000 U.S. crypto users.

The confusion around cost basis in the new 1099-DA forms is made worse thanks to a degree of overreporting built into the new regime, Coinbase says. This is because everyday activities like stablecoin payments and Ethereum gas fees trigger taxable events, while generating little meaningful tax revenue.

Coinbase said it expects to issue over four million 1099-DAs Forms to customers with under $600 of proceeds – added to the fact that over 60 percent of its customers have incomplete cost basis data due to the way digital assets move across wallets and platforms.

“Today, that means every stablecoin payment, every small DeFi [decentralized finance] transaction, every gas fee is technically a taxable event,” Coinbase said. “The compliance burden this imposes on ordinary Americans isn't just inconvenient – it's a direct threat to the adoption and innovation the GENIUS Act was designed to unlock.”

Despite the wrinkles, the move to standardized reporting of crypto taxes will help adoption in the long run, said Matt Price, director of investigations at blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. Price, a former IRS special agent focused on criminal investigations, sees this as a shift toward targeted enforcement rather than the broad, manual investigations of the past.

Also a former head of investigations at Binance, Price understands the complexity of doing crypto taxes, having been paid partly in crypto by Binance and having to account for a volatile asset in the form of a payment.

“How do you even report it?" Price said in an interview. "I didn't even have a 1099 to report that, so I had to essentially do all of my own accounting to file accurate taxes to account for that information.”

As such, the arrival of 1099-DA forms means welcome standardization that simply brings crypto in line with what other financial products have had for years and mirrors the approach of the 1099-B for brokerages.

“There's certainly nuance and it’s a fair point that the basis is harder to calculate given the high frequency of trading,” Price said. “But there are some parallels to that in traditional investments as well; I don't know how many retail traders are running algo trades on Schwab, for example, but that is also a very similar type of trade. If they can figure it out, I think the industry can probably figure it out.”

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